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INTRODUCTION
Lady Charlotte Susan
Maria Campbell, one of the greatest beauties of her day, whose “Diary
Illustrative of the Times of George the Fourth” (which we here reprint)
made so much stir in the world when it first appeared in 1838 merits a
short biographical notice.
She was born February 18, 1775, and was the younger daughter of John,
5th Duke of Argyll, and of his wife, Elizabeth Gunning, Duchess of
Hamilton, one of the beautiful Irish Gunnings of whom we learn so much
from Horace Walpole. For Elizabeth Gunning, though her fair face was her
sole fortune, married in succession two Scottish Dukes. By her mother’s
two marriages Lady Charlotte was half-sister to the 7th and 8th Dukes of
Hamilton and to the unhappy Elizabeth, Countess of Derby, and full
sister to George, 6th, and John Douglas, 7th Duke of Argyll and to the
handsome Lady Augusta Clavering. She received her name from Queen
Charlotte, whom her mother had escorted from Germany when betrothed to
her future husband King George III. and to whom she was then
Lady-in-waiting, and as a duke’s daughter was, from her earliest years,
naturally placed in the highest society. Horace Walpole, writing of the
Argyll family to Miss Berry in 1791, when Lady Charlotte was only
sixteen, says, “Everybody admires the youngest daughter’s person and
understanding.” She was much abroad in France and Italy during early
life, owing to the ill-health of her mother (who died in 1790) and she
acquired a very considerable knowledge of art and a real love of
literature and music. She was presented to King George III. and Queen
Charlotte, when about seventeen, and soon astonished London by her
beautiful face and handsome presence, and we find her praises sung in
many letters and memoirs of the time. Like many another spoiled beauty,
however, she did not make a brilliant match, for on June 21, 1796, she
married her kinsman, John Campbell, “handsome Jack Campbell,” a good
looking young man of twenty-four, “a great fellow,” and with only a
small income, as was most natural, as he was the eldest of the fourteen
children of Walter Campbell of Shawfield.
At first Lady Charlotte and her husband were a good deal in Edinburgh,
where she queened it over the literary set and wrote some poems which
were published anonymously 1797, and there in 1798 she, “in pride of
rank and beauty’s bloom,” introduced Walter Scott, of whom she had made
a friend, to Matthew Lewis, the then celebrated author of “The Monk,”
whose “Divinity” she was. Another of her friends and correspondents was
Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, the antiquary, whom some called “the
Scottish Walpole;” and a more critical one, Miss Susan Ferrier, the
novelist, whose father was agent for the Argyll family and who was a
frequent visitor at Inverary Castle, where Lady Charlotte often acted as
chdtdaine. In 1803 she and her husband made Hartwell, in Bucks, their
headquarters, but she was still frequently in Scotland, and in Edinburgh
in 1809 her husband died, leaving her, at the age of thirty-four, a
widow, “in uneasy circumstances,” as she had been since her marriage,
with nine children but scantily provided for.
A year after this, whether compelled by poverty or not, she accepted the
position of Lady-in-waiting to H.R.H.
Caroline, Princess of Wales, with whom she had sympathised for some
years. The situation was not a pleasant one, as the Princess was
separated from her husband, the powerful and vindictive Prince of Wales,
and estranged by Queen Charlotte’s dislike to her, from the Court. To
add more difficulties, she, by her own imprudence, follies and
indiscreet conduct, was continually making her position and that of her
ladies and gentlemen, which was bad at all times, worse than it might
have been. Deserted by her husband soon after the birth, in 1796, of
their only child, the Princess Charlotte, the Princess of Wales had been
involved in serious charges of adultery brought against her by two
treacherous friends, Sir John and Lady Douglas, whom she, though knowing
little of their antecedents, had foolishly made much of during her
retirement at Blackheath. Though cleared of the charges in 1806 by “the
Delicate Investigation” of a Commission of Peers appointed by her ^jmde
the King— always her friend—she was reproved for levity of manners, and
though allowed to appear at Court, she was coldly received by the old
Queen and debarred from seeing much of her daughter. The scandal which
attached to those proceedings naturally was reflected on her circle, and
as she still continued to keep with her a child, William Austin, said,
by rumour, to be her own, but whom the “ Delicate Investigation ” held
to be the child of a poor woman at Deptford whom the Princess had taken
under her protection, there were still many people who believed the
former scandals, which therefore came to the surface from time to time,
and these timid worthies either avoided the Princess’s Court or at most
gave it only ^uast-recogni-tion, particularly after her persecuting
husband became Prince Regent in 1811. As she was always pressed for
money, in addition to her Court duties, Lady Charlotte attempted to make
an income by literature. In 1812 she published a novel (the precursor of
many others) called “ Self-Indulgence,” but in 1813 the affairs of the
Princess of Wales involved more of her attention as they took a turn for
the worse. She was bearer of a letter in January from the Princess to
her husband, now Prince Regent, petitioning for freer intercourse with
Princess Charlotte, her daughter, but on account of this embassy she was
received in a most insulting manner.1 During her term of waiting at the
Princess’s Court (she was then living at 13 Upper Brook Street and going
much into society as well), she kept, as we shall see later, a full
Diary and in it recorded her impressions and opinions as well as the
foibles of her mistress, the Princess of Wales, for whom, in spite of
her undignified conduct, she seems to have had a genuine compassion and
a real though contemptuous affection. In 1814, the service of the
Princess became, through her exhibition of favouritism, too compromising
however, and on the excuse of taking her family to Geneva, Lady
Charlotte went abroad, but she still remained on friendly terms with her
former mistress and corresponded with the Princess and her suite. In
October Lady Charlotte was somewhat surprised to find that the Princess
of Wales, who had also gone abroad to seek a freer air, arrived also at
Geneva, appeared in a bizarre manner at a ball where she was, and
extracted a promise that she would rejoin her later during her journeys
on the Continent. She accordingly left Nice for Genoa in April 1815 in
the Princess of Wales’ frigate, the Clorinda, joining the Princess at
Genoa and went with her to Milan, not leaving her service finally until
May 1815, having remained longer than any other member of her English
suite, who could not suffer the favour the Princess showed to her
ex-courier Bartolomeo Bergami. Lady Charlotte returned to England, “more
eaten up with sentiment than ever,” says Miss Ferrier, and going abroad
again, displeased her family and friends by marrying at Florence on
March 17, 1818, a young clergyman of good birth who possessed a real
taste for Art, the Rev. Edward John Bury, who had travelled in Italy
with her eldest son, and under the name of Lady Charlotte Bury she was
cited as a witness for the defence at the trial of Queen Caroline in
1820, and was in England during her sad last days and death. Her
husband’s extravagant tastes as well as her own impecunious
circumstances forced Lady Charlotte, now in England, now abroad, to take
up her pen anew, and her novels came thick and fast.
She published “Conduct is Fate” (1822), “Alla Giomata” (1826),
“Flirtation, a Marriage in High Life” (1828), “The Exclusives,” “The
Separation” (1830), “The Disinherited,” “The Ensnared” (1834), “The
Devoted” (1836), “The Divorced,” “Love” (1837), “Family Records,” “The
History of a Flirt” (1840), and “The Manoeuvring Mother” (1842).
Her books sold well and she obtained (says N. P. Willis) as much as £200
for each of these sentimental tales. In addition she published a work in
verse, “The Three Sanctuaries of Tuscany,” in 1833, which was, owing to
her husband’s illustrations, of real value, and several religious books,
the title of one of which (published also in 1830) “Suspirium Sanctorum;
or, Holy Breathings,” cannot fail to remind us of Thackeray’s “Heavenly
Chords” in his paper on “The Fashionable Authoress.”
Lady Charlotte, after many tempestuous and wandering years, died, still
beautiful, and, in spite of what ill-informed writers say, by no means
alone and neglected,* but lovingly tended by her surviving daughters,
Lady Arthur Lennox and Mrs. William Russell, at her own house, 91 Sloane
Street, London, on March 31, 1861, having attained to the advanced age
of eighty-six.
In 1838 there had been published the book which, now known under her
name, was then anonymous and entitled the “Diary Illustrative of the
Times of George IV.” It is said that Mr. Bury, wanting money, “took
possession of" Lady Charlotte’s private journal, never intended for
publication, that he “made a few alterations and additions, introducing
some remarks on Lady Charlotte by way of disguise, and published it
without her knowledge, adding many letters addressed to her.” To this
were added very pharisaical notes and a few quasi-embellishments or
disguises, and the whole was printed with many internal evidences of
hasty preparation for the Press. It had at once un succis de scandale
and an immense sale. Of the “Literary Gazette” of Almack’s, which
indicated some of the characters, 5000 copies alone were sold. It was
fiercely attacked in the reviews, which said it was vulgar,
untrustworthy, unreliable or vulgar as they chose, and the best-known
criticism which tore it to pieces was W. M. Thackeray’s satire,
“Skimmings from the Diary of George IV.,” by C. Yellowplush, Esq. But
though Thackeray had nothing too bad to say of the diary itself, this
did not prevent him quoting some of its most pregnant passages when he
desired to use them as brilliant illustrations of his immortal “Four
Georges.”
The extent of the Lady Charlotte’s complicity in the publication of the
Diary has been variously stated, but that the Diary—save for a few
disguising facts —was the work of herself alone cannot possibly be
denied. In spite of the “disguise” every one coupled her name with it,
and indeed the thinness of the veil was obvious. The Earl of Albemarle
(1799-1891) quotes it in his “Fifty Years of My Life" as does Karoline
Bauer in her “Memoirs,” as of her authorship. Many of her friends were
indignant when they saw it and did not wish to meet her, and Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Lady Charlotte’s own correspondent, wrote in a
natural fury at its publication. “I cannot express my vexation about the
book you mention ... in all my reading and experience I never knew
anything of the kind. When I wrote the silly, impertinent letters in
question, between twenty and thirty years ago, I knew that I was writing
to the Duke of Argyle’s daughter, and thought myself safe by all the
common rules of good breeding and morality. But I find I was extremely
deceived. I could say more on this head, but my gratitude gets the
better of my spleen, for I am eternally bound to remember that Lady
Charlotte Bury is Lady Wemyss’ sister-in-law and Mr. Campbell’s mother.”
The Diary gives, however, what no other book does, an account of the
curious and undignified Court of Caroline, Princess of Wales, at home
and abroad, and, purged of many of the unnecessary pharisaical notes
which have disfigured the former editions, we now present it in this new
form. From the facts it records about the life of the Princess, in spite
of her continual indiscretions, and feeling the gravest sorrow at the
continual persecution she experienced at the hands of the despicable
Prince Regent, “the First Gentleman in Europe,” we cannot, like the
writer herself, help compassionating the unfortunate Princess of Wales,
whose Court it describes. Nor do we fail to reprobate his mother, “The
Good Queen Charlotte,” of whose extraordinarily harsh conduct towards
her daughter-in-law and Princess Charlotte we get some very striking
instances, entirely on a par with her harsh rule which caused all her
sons to revolt and had unedifying results within her family circle
itself, which we hope will never be fully chronicled. We are shown not
only how the Princess of Wales, whose marriage was inauspicious, and
from the start unhappy, was made use of as a tool, first by one
political party and then by another, but also how very few politicians
had her own cause at heart. In spite of the contemptuous phrases used
about her in the Diary, we cannot help thinking that Lady Charlotte
Campbell did enact the part of a friend—though a very critical one—
towards her mistress at a perilous time.
The character given of the Princess Charlotte is that of a high-spirited
girl trying to grope for the right way in the midst of horrible domestic
factions, and when we read this, together with what is recorded in the
reminiscences of her boy friend, Lord Albemarle, and in the
Autobiography of Miss Knight, one of her Ladies-in-waiting, we begin to
see how attractive she was and how the nation hoped for a good Queen in
the ill-fated daughter of the selfish voluptuary the Prince Regent and
his indiscreet consort; a girl who had courage enough to say of her
parents, “My mother was wicked, but she would not have turned so wicked
had not my father been much more wicked still.”
There have been several previous editions of this book, one of which was
reviewed as if a new work by a contemporary, so little was it known, but
this differs from them all. Besides the omission of the horrible italics
and many of the unnecessary and disgusting original notes, which perhaps
were inspired by Colburn or John Galt, and the unnecessary account of
the “Public Characters” and the “Regency and Reign of George IV.,” we
have made an important change in the text of the “Diary” itself. The
names left blank in the former editions (the more important were always
but thinly veiled and often explained in an explanatory foot-note) have,
where possible, been filled up (although placed in brackets that the
modem addition may be easily noticed) from old annotated copies, and
these names will be further filled np, if possible, in future editions.
Now that so long a time has elapsed since the Diary was first given to
the world this can do no harm, and we hope that the few biographical
notes which are added will make the book more interesting to the modem
reader of the history of the Regency.
Volume 1 |
Volume 2 |
